I would like to know the answers and explanation to the following questions:
Which user/group should own the cake files?
If different, which use
For all files in app/tmp
and subfolders you only need rw for the web server process and if needed to use the CLI, the console user.
If someone runs console commands with a user that has super rights or is in the wrong group it messes up things because what one creates can't be read or written from the other and then there are warning or failure messages. Some people (including me when I'm too lazy) fix that with 777
:)